Performance comparison of scheduling algorithms for multipath transfer

Multipath transport protocols such as Multipath TCP can concurrently use several subflows to transmit a TCP flow over potentially different paths. Since more than one subflow is used, an efficient multipath scheduling algorithm is needed at the sender. The objective of the scheduler is to identify the subflow over which the current data packet should be sent. This paper compares the most important types of schedulers for multipath transfers. We model their performance analytically and derive key metrics, most notably the resulting end-to-end delay over heterogeneous paths. Our results show that a scheduler minimizing the packet delivery delay yields the best overall performance, but it is complex to realize. An alternative scheduler based on the sender queue size is simpler and has sufficient performance for relatively small asymmetry between the multiple paths. Our model results are confirmed by measurements with a real multipath transport protocol.